Entries from November 2017

Head coach Dan Lampe wants his Madison County girls’ basketball team to be the more energized team every game they play. He wants the Lady Raiders faster, looser and more aggressive.
And judging by their 62-22 win over Oglethorpe County Tuesday night, you can say that the Lady Raiders lived up to their coach’s expectations.
“That’s our plan every night, to ransack, get all over them, and make them not be able to run their plan,” Lampe said. “We really wanted to push fast breaks and force turnovers. We wanted to get them in a track meet, that’s how we broke it open.”
Madison County (1-2, 0-0) imposed their dominance from the opening tip-off as scoring leaders Adryana Maxwell and K. McPherson combined for 10 of the Lady Raiders 18 first quarter points. They led the Patriots 18-5 after the first quarter.
The duo was even better in the second quarter as they combined for 11 of the teams 19 points. Madison County took a decisive 37-10 lead into halftime. McPherson had 12 points at the break while Maxwell had nine.
They didn’t score much in the second half, that’s because they didn’t play much. Madison County remained stingy on defense even as Lampe phased out his starting-five and began pulling girls off the bench to finish the game. And they finished strong. Now lead by B. Fortson at the point, the Lady Raiders led 52-15 after the third quarter and 62-22 by the time the final buzzer went off.
“They played with good effort, we just have to get people in the right spots a little bit more,” Lampe said. “It was kind of an ugly game, but it is what it is. We try to make it an ugly game so I can’t complain that much when it is.”
McPherson finished the game with 15 points and Maxwell was right behind her with 11. S. Armstrong added nine points. Fortson scored seven points, all in the final 10 minutes.

The Red Raiders normally rely on their defense, but they didn’t look too shabby on offense Tuesday night at Oglethorpe County.
An energized Madison County team defeated the Patriots 70-34 behind Jackson Bailey’s 23 points. Traveon Lattimore added 11, Dylan Carey added eight points off the bench.
“That’s one thing we asked this week, we talked about competing,” said head coach Tim Drake. “Compete to win. We don’t really preach playing hard, anybody can play hard. But we want to compete to win every night. And we did bring a ton of energy tonight.”
Madison County opened (1-1, 0-0) opened the game with 17 on a 17-0 run and only surrendered one goal. They led 17-2 after just one quarter with Bailey scoring nine of those points. He made most of those points off of offensive rebounds.
“Jackson has needed a game like this,” Drake said. “He’s one of the most fundamental players I’ve ever coached. He’s a four-year starter on varsity, he stepped up tonight and he’s been a big leader. He’s our best and hardest working player, that’s all you can ask for out of him.
Oglethorpe found more on an offense in the second quarter, but the red Raiders still outscored them 17-13 to take a 34-15 lead into the break. Bailey had 11 points at halftime. Xavier Heard had five points and Lattimore had four.
Coming out of halftime, Oglethorpe looked a little more energetic and they began cutting the lead. Until Bailey got free on a layup and slammed down a dunk that deflated the Oglethorpe side and swung the momentum in Madison County’s favor. By the end of the run, Madison County led 59-28 and the Raiders began pulling starters soon after.
Oglethorpe was unable to cut into the Raiders lead against bench players. Madison County went out on top 70-34.
“We got a lot of minutes out of our bench and we wanted to see that tonight,” he said. “Because there’s going to be some nights where we can’t do that and we have to play our starters more so. I was glad to get some of those younger guys into the game and the feel of varsity basketball.”

Jefferson has won its appeal to play in Class AAA, athletic director Bill Navas confirmed. The vote by the GHSA reclassification committee was unanimous.
Jefferson High School principal Brian Moore presented the school's appeal Monday morning.
The school was placed in Class AAAA in 2016 due to a rule from the GHSA addressing out-of-county enrollment. Since Jefferson's out-of-county enrollment of 8.1 percent exceeded the three-percent threshold set by the GHSA, Jefferson was moved from Class AAA to AAAA.
Jefferson appealed, unsuccessfully, to the GHSA executive committee in 2016 to remain in Class AAA. It was unable to appeal directly to the reclassification committee in 2016 because it did not file an appeal in time.
But with the GHSA hearing appeals during its mid-cycle adjustment, Jefferson was able to make its appeal to the reclassification committee this time.
Jefferson will be assigned to Region 8-AAA, where it spent the 2014-15 and 2015-16 athletic seasons.
For more on this story, see the Nov. 29 edition of The Jackson Herald.

The wrestling season is upon Jefferson, but the Dragon lineup likely won’t be a finished product until the stockings are hung and presents are under the tree.
The perennial state champions have just now welcomed back the football-playing members of their team as they build toward another title defense.
“I think the team we start with is not going to be the team that will start showing its face by Christmas time,” coach Doug Thurmond said.
The coach explained that some wrestlers will move weight classes over the next few weeks. Others will slide into spots. And practice time will eventually start paying off for those who just recently returned to the wrestling mat.
Still, this historical program — which won its 17th-straight traditional state title and 16th-consecutive duals championship last year — will be tested very soon.
Jefferson, which begins its schedule Wednesday, faces one of its biggest early-season tournaments this Friday and Saturday with the Panther Invitational at Jackson County.
State champions Commerce (Class A) and Social Circle (Class AA) will be among the field of teams. West Laurens and Gilmer County are also part of the tournament, giving Jefferson a glimpse of two of its major Class AAAA rivals.
“This weekend, there’s going to be some hammer dogs in there,” Thurmond said.
The Dragons enter the season returning one state champion, Dawson Bates, last year’s Class AAAA 132-pound winner.
For the rest of this story, see the Nov. 29 edition of The Jackson Herald.

East Jackson notched another win, but coach David Akin found the effort in the latest victory to be lacking.
The Eagles moved to 6-0 with a 45-33 win Tuesday over Athens Christian, a perennial 20-plus win team in Class A.
Akin said early-season success might have led to his team playing uninspired basketball.
“They are a victim of success,” he said. “All we hear in school right now is how great we are, how the school has never been 5-0 before, how we’re going to win state, all kinds of things. They might as well just have the parade right now.”
“It’s ridiculous. I’ve tried to tell the kids not to listen to that and to stay focused. And tonight’s performance is a direct correlation between listening to what I would say is fool’s gold.”
The game was played on the campus of Prince Avenue Christian School due to water damage to the floor at Athens Christian’s gym. Tay Howard led East Jackson with 15 points, 11 of which came after halftime as the Eagles gradually pulled away from Athens Christian. Jace Bonds added 10 points.
Akin said the team didn’t execute well, simply setting for 3-pointers.
“We’ve shot the ball very well the first five games, and so that’s masked a lot of problems — not rebounding, not talking on defense,” he said. “So tonight, we don’t shoot it well and our answer is just shoot more 3’s, which is typical high school basketball players. They have to have a smarter basketball IQ to compete at a high level. That shows a lack of it, but I’m ultimately to blame because I’m their coach.”
Bonds paced the Eagles during the first half with eight points as East Jackson led 20-19 at the break.
East Jackson fell behind 25-22 in the third quarter before reeling off 10 straight points to take control of the game. Howard scored six straight points during a stretch in the fourth quarter as East Jackson ran its lead out to 42-28.
Akin, however, said his team did not travel to Athens ready to play.
“We came over here, thought we were just going to walk in the gym and win, didn’t have to do anything to earn the victory, and inevitably we had a ball game until the fourth quarter,” he said. “If they think they can rely on talent to win games, they are sadly mistaken. We don’t have enough talent to win games. It’s going to have to be 100 percent effort, 100 percent focus throughout an entire game.”
While he said he took nothing positive from the win, Akin did point to the team’s Saturday road matchup with defending Class 5A champion Buford.
“We’ve got an incredible opportunity to find out how we match up with the best players and one of the best teams in the state,” Akin said. “I’m excited. I couldn’t wait to get this game on the schedule. Because if you want to be the best, you’ve got to play the best. And now our kids get an understanding of what the best looks like.”

On a night dominated by defense, East Jackson had just enough of it in crunch time.
The East Jackson girls' basketball team (3-2) jumped ahead 26-24 with 53 seconds left and surrendered just one point down the stretch in holding off Athens Christian for a 26-25 win.
“We battled and were able to secure a ‘W,’” East Jackson coach Matt Gibbs said. “We’ve just got to continue to run our stuff a little better.”
Freshman Kenzie Whitehead accounted for nearly half the team’s points, finishing with 12. Maurissa Thomas added eight points, including the go-ahead bucket in the final minute.
“A wise, very successful coach told me every win is a good win, so we’ll be excited about this one and learn from it,” Gibbs said.
Athens Christian, which hosted the game at Prince Avenue due to floor issues at the ACS gym, missed two-of-three free throws inside the final 30 seconds in falling short.
“It’s nice for a change for the other people to miss the free throws,” Gibbs said. “We’ve missed some big ones here recently, so maybe that was the basketball gods returning the favor to us.”
East Jackson ran out to an 11-2 lead after a quarter but went cold in the second quarter. The Eagles managed a single bucket and trailed 14-13 at the half.
But East Jackson found a spark coming out of halftime. Whitehead scored back-to-back baskets to open the third quarter, putting the Eagles ahead 17-14. Whitehead added another pair of buckets toward the end of the quarter to extend the lead to 23-18.
“One thing I can say about this group, is coming out of halftime, we’ve responded,” Gibbs said. “Now, we’ve just got to work on closing halves and responding to start the halves. We came out and battled and Kenzie was attacking the gaps in the 1-3-1 (zone). We got some good looks. We got a bunch of good looks. We couldn’t get them to fall there.”
Athens Christian eventually tied the game 24-24 in the fourth quarter, but Thomas’ runner in the lane with just under a minute remaining put East Jackson back ahead.
Turnovers down the stretch gave Athens Christian multiple opportunities to tie or take the lead, but East Jackson responded with enough defensive stops to earn a fourth-straight win over the Class A school.
“They’re always close … It’s always a battle,” Gibbs said. "They play hard every time we play them. I think it’s good for both programs to play those close games.”

The Jefferson girls’ basketball team improved to 2-2 with a 66-33 home win over Habersham Central Tuesday.
McKenzie Tyner led the Dragons with 13 points. Allieanne Clark added 12 points off the bench. Jazmin Allen finished with 10 points.
Jefferson hit 14-out-17 free throws in the win.
The team returns to action Tuesday, Dec. 5, at home against Morgan County at 6 p.m.

Jasper Gibson scored 15 points and Daniel Parker added 13 points as Jefferson improved to 2-3 with a 60-41 win over Habersham Central at home Tuesday.
The Dragons return to action Tuesday, Dec. 5, at home against Morgan County at 7:30 p.m.

Over the past two seasons, the Commerce High School boys’ basketball team has won a combined three games and lost 45.
For first-year Tigers’ head coach Russ Gregg, the biggest key to turning the program around is to try and “get better every day.” There are other keys that follow suit with the first one.
“The big thing is just trying to get (the team’s) confidence up,” he said. “They’ve been told how bad they were, and when you don’t win, that sort of happens.
“But I know, also looking at the schedule, that regardless our schedule is very tough, especially when you’re playing in a league like we’re playing where Lakeview Academy’s loaded and Athens Christian went to the Elite Eight.”
Lakeview Academy went to the Final Four. They both are region teams. The Tigers’ non-region schedule includes North Hall, Oconee County and Johnson.
“So we’re playing schools a lot bigger than us,” Gregg said. “It’s something that I would like to sort of work on, to try and get a little confidence, but in the long haul, I always believed as a college coach that playing a tougher schedule made things better for you come January and February.”
For the rest of this story, see the Nov. 29 edition of The Jackson Herald.

Last season, the Commerce High School girls’ basketball team went 3-22, a far cry from the two seasons before (17 wins apiece).
Coming into the 2017-18 season, which begins this Friday at North Hall, the Lady Tigers return all five starters from last season: McKenzie Mcree, Autumn Mathis, Shatoya Johnson, Jeanece Smith and Gracie Hamilton. And head coach Brad Puckett is eager to see how far his then-young squad has grown from being eliminated in the Region 8-A tournament last season to the start of this season.
“They have come out and worked really, really hard all summer long,” Puckett said. “They spent the month of June coming to practice and going to camps and working on their individual skills and working as a team on our skills.
“This season, day one, we mentioned last year and what are we going to do with the lessons learned. After that, I told the girls, ‘We’re never going to speak of last year again.’ I said, ‘We’ve learned from it. We’ve moved on this summer from it and we’re going to do nothing but move forward from this point on,’ and they’ve been doing that steadily every day.”
For the rest of this story, see the Nov. 29 edition of The Jackson Herald.